Saturday, 4 December 2010

Load every rift with ore, Keats's admonition to Shelley, ignores the dangers of the horror vacui. There are so many rifts. Will he

somehow fill them all? And what about emphasis? Should not something central be allowed to dominate? No, there is no center. Nothing but marks in space, in every empty space a mark, here a mark, there a mark. It's that all-over-y feeling: no flowers, just park, park, park.

I love this (and reading it aloud) and would like to thank you for returning me to contemplation of horror vacui and its opposite, empty space. Both can speak eloquently, depending on the context, and as you suggest, there are so many ways to sculpt the middle road.

Reading the poem and looking at the well-chosen pictures (that Safavid miniature really is full), and reading up on the Keats quotation, I was reminded of that line in the Velvet Underground song, Some Kinda Love, that goes "between thought and expression lies a lifetime".

It's like depth of focus: sometimes you want flowers and park, sometimes you want one or the other. Horror vacui itself is such a strong expression.

"It's like depth of focus: sometimes you want flowers and park, sometimes you want one or the other."

Reasonable limitation of detail would seem necessary if only because life, if not also art, is so very short.

But how is this to be achieved.

I find it possible to tumble, at times, like now, in the middle of the night, when it is raining, and the cats are moving about, into a sort of hollow plenism.

With this comes an image of Magdeburg Hemispheres floating in the blackness above the dripping redwood boughs like flying saucers, the rims of their lids sealed to the rims of their bases by air pressure from without, and the insides containing... nothing.

(And yes, that Safavid miniature is, as you say, so wonderfully full.)

Yes, so many rifts -- Messrs Mamluk and Musawwir seem to have loaded every rift quite well, thank you. "Nothing but marks in space" -- or as Stein said she learned from Cezanne, every part of the composition is as important as every other part. . . .